Onsite Vs Offshore life

Before telling about the onsite life, let me tell about the journey to this destination. I was an average student (actually not even an average, but all the time I was imagining myself as an average :). My classmates might not agree to that, may be I was in the last few in a group of 50) and it was a real achievement for me to join Infosys. Like any other average guy, when I did my schooling I was targeting to get into a good college. That dream got fulfilled partially as my college was not so great academically (which I knew even before I joined and still preferred); it was a real college on comparison with the engineering ‘schools’ that are there in Tamil Nadu. After joining college the next obvious target was getting a good job. In fact I was not much bothered about getting a job through out my college life. After completing the course, I never had a belief that I could a job with the knowledge I acquired in college (was there any?). After joining Infosys and when those jitters got settled down I started wondering what my next target is. After a year rolled by, the target was obviously to go to onsite. It was not because of the role looked interesting to me neither I had that interest to experience the American way of life. It was simple for me; everyone is going there so I should also go there. Once I got my visa with all the hype given to the number of requirements that was there in my account I wanted to go the next day. (Man getting the stamping was like waiting for the doors of heaven open on the Judgment day.) Even a day’s wait seemed a wasted day for us (yeah it was not only me). Periodically we would go to meet the account manager to ask about the opportunity and each time he used speak about everything except about our chances (the happenings of those meetings definitely deserves a separate blog). That fine day at last came and I am here (Now wondering what my next target is?).


Life at onsite… Wake up in the morning and think if I should work from home or go to office. If working from home I would have to intimate my manager about the same. Reasoning for that would always be ‘I am sick’. My manager would know that it is not that fact, and I too know that he knows that I am lying. But it is regularly followed custom and I have to follow the same. Other worst part of working from home is food. I neither would have to anything to eat nor would I have the energy or interest to cook. Considering all these I would decide that I will go to office. Now the first problem that is encountered for the day is which dress to wear. Not that I am very choosy about the dress I wear. It is that all the dress will be too wrinkled or will not be washed for a long time. Now I will have to select a less wrinkled dress and wear the same. The next problem is breakfast. Before getting to work place (should I call it work place? Do I really do any useful work?) I would have to get some thing for breakfast and join a meeting for which I will be running late. The some thing would always be the same thing. It is Chick Fila’s chicken biscuit. Then I would log into a meeting, introduce myself (only thing which I do in most of the meetings) and start having my breakfast. Most of meetings or in fact all the meeting would either have no purpose or the purpose not be solved. Funniest part is all the people attending would know that. After doing the regular activities of the day like checking mail and chatting with few people it would be lunch time. Now open a conversation between all friends to check when and where to go for lunch. There would no discussion be around this as the options would be very few at least for we Indians. I am not yet completely Americanized to have lunch in an American Restaurant (Is there any real American cuisine?). So eventually we would either go to a Chinese or Indian restaurant. The options you would get would be fried rice in Chinese or some crap combo in Indian restaurant. Not to mention the taste of the food which would no where be in comparison with the food we eat in India.


And the lunch table discussions will always be about offshore irrespective what they to do, we find a reason to find fault against them as it is a custom to speak all bad things about offshore. Get back to work which is to forward a couple of mails to offshore and leave back home. Here arises an interesting problem of boredom which was non existent for me so far. After getting back home without knowing what to do I would download one crap movie and start watching it. Ah… it is dinner time and I would have to cook once in three or four days which I never thought would be such a pain. What does week ends have in store for you? How different is that from Weekdays? Nothing much...Only major difference is that I don’t go to office.

Life at offshore…Wake up in the morning… not to forget where my father or mother would be trying to wake me up for at least half an hour that too with a hot coffee. After drinking the coffee I would start thinking if I should go to office or not (this thought is universal… wherever I go seems like this will not change). Then I would decide to go to office thinking about getting a mention on lot of unplanned leaves in the forthcoming appraisal (Do I really care about it?). By the time I wake up everything will be ready… dress to wear, hot water to take bath, shoe, socks and most importantly breakfast. Reach office and start work (of course after checking mails, scraps and what not)… first thing is to check if there are some escalations against you which would definitely be there every other day. Have fun reading those and sending reply mails to those (this would be a template reply saying that ‘This is a learning and I will ensure that this doesn’t happen in future’)…

Not to forget those T session wherein you spend about 1 hr twice a day discussing about everything except work. You could be certain that every day the discussion would be around the manager (there would hell a lot of comedies on them) or the past appraisal … In between all these fun do some bit of work and head back home. Here is where my day starts, road cricket, late night chats, party every other day, meeting with college friends and most importantly mother made dinner. And weekends starts with meeting friends in a near by shop to discuss what to do for the day…couple of hours road side cricket, ride in ECR, Night show movies, late night party and in between calls from parents enquiring when I will come back home…

MONEY (one major factor), watching crap movies in laptop, boredom, late night calls Vs Mother’s food, loads of friends, movies, party, home country, mother language, relatives, tea shops (most important). And would I have the time at offshore to write this big stupid blog amidst doing all interesting things.

So why am I still here? Hmm…Everybody is here for a couple of years… I am an average guy who goes with the wind… so I better be here for at least a year… 15 weeks gone… 37 to go.

Greener pastures are always on the opposite side.